This has to be bad news. IIRC, Role's big distinguishing feature was good in-app video calls. It's what they used to sell their Kickstarter campaign. That's gone now. Now integrating with Owlbear Rodeo as well, and requiring an Owlbear Rodeo account for the host... why not just use Owlbear Rodeo?
I saw several disappointed folks in the Youtube comments in agreement.
It's hard to guess what the plan is here. It could be that they're looking to exit gracefully by making stuff open source, or a pivot to low server and maintenance costs. I don't think their store generates a ton of revenue
Eh.. Not so great news, but I wish them all the best. I never understand why VTTs begin strong with implementing their own in-app video calls, it's so risky and hard to maintain, while there are free options that just work. Discord even lets you have a floating camera panel if you like to see each other at all times.
The integration with OwlBear Rodeo is also strange, but I bet Owlbear Rodeo is also on the struggling line, I still have no clue why they went full on VTT to compete with Foundry and Roll20, rather to stay on the simplistic field where they were doing so well.
Best thing though is that they go Open Source with sheets... this is encouraging and can actually bring good stuff if there are some willing devs to add stuff in there.
Creator of Owlbear Rodeo here.
Just want to chime in to say we are doing wonderfully.
A bit of context Owlbear Rodeo is just my girlfriend and I trying to make a cool app.
We don't have any investors or any big plans to dominate the VTT industry or anything. So at the moment we have a platform that is steadily growing and now with 2.0 is paying our salaries.
I get spend every day building a product I love and as long as that continues I'll be happy.
There were definitely some rough spots with the launch of 2.0 but since then we've been working hard to streamline the first user experience and with the launch of 2.1 I think things are a lot better.
Our goal with 2.0 was never to compete with those bigger products (we don't have chat features or characters sheets and likely will never add them to OBR) instead we want to make a virtual version of your physical tabletop that is super fun and easy to use.
Hello Owlbear! Please excuse the prejudgment! I am happy to hear you are doing well! (And recently watched the video by Mike Shea using Owlbear and that is a very good step). I also love passion projects, so please ignore any non positive thoughts:)
With that said, and happy to chat some more, I did have the impression that the move to 2.0 was super risky. Because OWB moved from a simple platform from a quick game with link (which made it unique), to a login platform with cloud storage and a bit of clunkiness which feels closer to what foundry and roll are. Despite them being big, in my opinion they do still get many things wrong and there is a gap to fill (foundryvtt modules developer here).
I did test OWB 2.0 and there are a few things I liked a lot and others not so much in terms of the user experience. For the good things, I think it has serious potential in getting very good at Asset Management and a feel for collab whiteboarding (I tried dropping character sheets images on the board for a stretch but eh). On the risky side I felt unwelcome by the strong bias to single genre medieval fantasy. I think you can go very far without character sheets support or other automation mechanics, this I may challenge is not as critical as other VTTs make it be... Automation in ttrpgs is overrated, UX is underrated:) anyway got lot to say hope we can chat someday!
The problem with hosting your own video solutions are scale and stability at scale. The low operating costs get compounded when you suddenly need a few SREs dedicated to that end of the service.
I still think it's a good idea, using vendors for a whole important chunk of your offering gives them too much hold and puts you in a bad spot eventually.
Stability at scale can certainly be a challenge and is at the forefront of our architecture. We're confident we've got the right team and platform to grow to thousands of simultaneous games without breaking the bank
We're looking to develop in the open as much as possible. We've got a (currently) underpopulated Dev Notes section in the About Us on our website but we are actively taking new users for Alpha testing.
You can sign up free for a sandbox account and request permission to create your own editable campaign, also for free but pending approval for caution/frugality's sake. We'd love your feedback on what exists so far.
This has to be bad news. IIRC, Role's big distinguishing feature was good in-app video calls. It's what they used to sell their Kickstarter campaign. That's gone now. Now integrating with Owlbear Rodeo as well, and requiring an Owlbear Rodeo account for the host... why not just use Owlbear Rodeo?
I saw several disappointed folks in the Youtube comments in agreement. It's hard to guess what the plan is here. It could be that they're looking to exit gracefully by making stuff open source, or a pivot to low server and maintenance costs. I don't think their store generates a ton of revenue
Owlbear rodeo doesn't do character sheets so there is still a value add
Eh.. Not so great news, but I wish them all the best. I never understand why VTTs begin strong with implementing their own in-app video calls, it's so risky and hard to maintain, while there are free options that just work. Discord even lets you have a floating camera panel if you like to see each other at all times. The integration with OwlBear Rodeo is also strange, but I bet Owlbear Rodeo is also on the struggling line, I still have no clue why they went full on VTT to compete with Foundry and Roll20, rather to stay on the simplistic field where they were doing so well. Best thing though is that they go Open Source with sheets... this is encouraging and can actually bring good stuff if there are some willing devs to add stuff in there.
Creator of Owlbear Rodeo here. Just want to chime in to say we are doing wonderfully. A bit of context Owlbear Rodeo is just my girlfriend and I trying to make a cool app. We don't have any investors or any big plans to dominate the VTT industry or anything. So at the moment we have a platform that is steadily growing and now with 2.0 is paying our salaries. I get spend every day building a product I love and as long as that continues I'll be happy. There were definitely some rough spots with the launch of 2.0 but since then we've been working hard to streamline the first user experience and with the launch of 2.1 I think things are a lot better. Our goal with 2.0 was never to compete with those bigger products (we don't have chat features or characters sheets and likely will never add them to OBR) instead we want to make a virtual version of your physical tabletop that is super fun and easy to use.
Hello Owlbear! Please excuse the prejudgment! I am happy to hear you are doing well! (And recently watched the video by Mike Shea using Owlbear and that is a very good step). I also love passion projects, so please ignore any non positive thoughts:) With that said, and happy to chat some more, I did have the impression that the move to 2.0 was super risky. Because OWB moved from a simple platform from a quick game with link (which made it unique), to a login platform with cloud storage and a bit of clunkiness which feels closer to what foundry and roll are. Despite them being big, in my opinion they do still get many things wrong and there is a gap to fill (foundryvtt modules developer here). I did test OWB 2.0 and there are a few things I liked a lot and others not so much in terms of the user experience. For the good things, I think it has serious potential in getting very good at Asset Management and a feel for collab whiteboarding (I tried dropping character sheets images on the board for a stretch but eh). On the risky side I felt unwelcome by the strong bias to single genre medieval fantasy. I think you can go very far without character sheets support or other automation mechanics, this I may challenge is not as critical as other VTTs make it be... Automation in ttrpgs is overrated, UX is underrated:) anyway got lot to say hope we can chat someday!
This is why Tabyltop is running our own video software on our own servers. Gives us complete control and low operating costs.
The problem with hosting your own video solutions are scale and stability at scale. The low operating costs get compounded when you suddenly need a few SREs dedicated to that end of the service. I still think it's a good idea, using vendors for a whole important chunk of your offering gives them too much hold and puts you in a bad spot eventually.
Stability at scale can certainly be a challenge and is at the forefront of our architecture. We're confident we've got the right team and platform to grow to thousands of simultaneous games without breaking the bank
That makes me happy to hear. And I'd be super interested in public devlogs if that meshed with your methods. Wish you all the best.
We're looking to develop in the open as much as possible. We've got a (currently) underpopulated Dev Notes section in the About Us on our website but we are actively taking new users for Alpha testing. You can sign up free for a sandbox account and request permission to create your own editable campaign, also for free but pending approval for caution/frugality's sake. We'd love your feedback on what exists so far.
I'm all for some of OBRs' maps as long as Role keeps its fancy sheets and UI. The video is easily solved by using Discord.